Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman today is expected to sign off on a settlement agreement in a court case in which five members of Cincinnati City Council -- P.G. Sittenfeld, Chris Seelbach, Greg Landsman, Tamaya Dennard and Wendell Young -- secretly held meetings via text message.

There were two such meetings and they're considered violations of Ohio's Open Meeting Act.

The settlement calls for the council members to admit they held those meetings and that Young deleted text messages that were considered evidence in the case.

City taxpayers will pay the citizen who filed the complaint $1,000 for holding the meetings and $10,000 for Young's deletion of the texts. $90,000 will be paid to the Finney Law Firm, who represented the citizen.

What to expect:

Court will look like a council meeting

They may be a courtroom, but five council members will be there facing a judge -- an unusual if not unprecedented moment in the city. . Expect lawyers and media to swarm the courtroom. The Enquirer will livestream the proceedings at Cincinnati.com and on its Facebook page. It's set to begin at 10 a.m.

Councilman Wendell Young could face contempt of court charges

Councilman Wendell Young could be held in contempt of court. After the judge ordered text messages turned over as discovery, Young deleted his texts. A grand jury was convened to investigate. If Ruehlman finds Young in contempt, a second hearing would have to be held on the matter.

The one-on-one text messages will likely be released

The settlement agreement calls for the texts to be released within 10 days and emails within 20 days, but it's likely everything will be released Thursday afternoon.

How – and if – they flow to the public remains to be seen. Media outlets will choose what to report and the Finney Law Firm, which sued for the records, will also make a determination about whether to share what they're to be given.

These are one-on-one text messages, the kind of texts in which council members are franker -- since they're not concerned anyone but the recipient would ever see them.

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There are roughly 25,000 of them, from the five council members, between Jan. 1, 2018 to Oct. 22, 2019. This period of time covers the ousting of City Manager Harry Black, the approval of incentives for the FC Cincinnati stadium, a homeless camp crisis and the 2019 city budget.